I've said it before but it bears repeating, I read your reviews long before I ever considered watching the show and now they're a staple of the OhMyBalls (Perhaps an unfortunate screen name but we were all so young) family dvr.
Can someone explain the head shaving incident, please?
Basically they got drunk and tried to shave his head and held him down at one point and he got pissed.
It all reads a little sensationalist to me, but I've had my head shaved and shaved heads as a natural part of rugby hazing so maybe I have a faulty barometer there. That being said, we didn't mess with the guys who had super long hair (one of which was native American) because that seemed messed up, so it was mostly consensual, unlike the Marcel incident. Plus part of the deal with the not-evil kind of hazing is that it's done between people who like each other, which didn't seem to be the case here. Anyway.
I think that was very much the case. With Marcel, it seems like everyone who ever had to work with him on the show got sick of him at some point. When I had my head shaved on a team it was as you described: largely consensual, and just another act of team building that involved a lot of alcohol.
Everyone else shaving their head after the Marcel incident was just extremely disingenuous.
Jeez. These over the top hazing rituals you guys had... We just made all the rookies chug an old cleat full of everyone's mixed up drinks while they were crammed into a shower stall watching porn before we put them in dresses and made them run an obstacle course that ended with a KY slip and slide...
We did one called "tank" where rookies would be on their hands and knees and girls would ride around on their backs directing them which way to go. They were supposed to have mouths full of flour that they'd spit at each other when the girls said "fire!"
A bit of a corollary is RuPaul's Drag Race. My wife has watched since season 1 and I have watched it since season 9 (when we started dating). We re-watched the first season during Covid and it was amazing how scruffy the show felt, and how lost some of the contestants were. No one knew what this thing was and it felt like the producers were making a lot of it up as they went along.
Now that it's an institution it has become a bit predictable. Every season you know basically ahead of time what the challenges will be (musical, improv, design, comedy, acting) and the contestants show up prepared (usually, so many of them show up not knowing how to use a sewing machine it drives me crazy).
The contestants themselves are also much more established and brand conscious. They are still catty in the ways that drag queens are, but the 'dramatic' interactions feel a bit more like pantomime compared to the earlier seasons when the queens would read the SHIT out of one another and blow-ups were much more common.
We still watch and enjoy the show, but in the past few years the sameness/predictability has made the seasons and contestants start to blend together. I'm hoping the show gets a major reset in the next few years (updated format or maybe even new host) to shake things up.
One of the reasons I found my way to Vince's recaps is because my husband & I started watching "Top Chef" during the pandemic—well, I had been watching it for a few years, but he got hooked on it and we went back and watched the earlier seasons. He refused to watch the first three seasons because they were filmed in standard definition, LOL, so I've still never seen s1.
We also got hooked on "Drag Race" in the same time period. I feel like the current season is the most chaotic in a while, but my biggest problem is always too many TikTok/Instagram "baby queens." If you watch the most recent UK season with La Voix, the difference in having a REAL seasoned queen in the cast (and I'm not talking about the oh-so-"ancient" Lexi Love) is obvious. I suspect, however, that if a "veteran" drag queen hasn't appeared on RPDR by now, it's because she doesn't want to do it... but there's an endless supply of 21-year-old fashionistas applying. The difference between Jorgeous in her original season and her all-stars season proves to me that a few extra years of experience can make a queen so much more likable and interesting.
Sasha Colby was so far and away the most talented queen in her season it was comical. Basically the entire season was a victory lap for her. She was the 96' Bulls of drag queens.
Nice summery there was also a wonderful first time ever restaurant wars . Tiffani talking about herself in the first person. She lost that final because of the way the judges cross examined Dave and Stephan and found out she was less than truthful about origin of the desert .
I've said it before but it bears repeating, I read your reviews long before I ever considered watching the show and now they're a staple of the OhMyBalls (Perhaps an unfortunate screen name but we were all so young) family dvr.
Can someone explain the head shaving incident, please?
My bad. Here's a good writeup:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/top-chef-marcel-vigneron-shaved-head_n_5b806383e4b0348586006bcb
Basically they got drunk and tried to shave his head and held him down at one point and he got pissed.
It all reads a little sensationalist to me, but I've had my head shaved and shaved heads as a natural part of rugby hazing so maybe I have a faulty barometer there. That being said, we didn't mess with the guys who had super long hair (one of which was native American) because that seemed messed up, so it was mostly consensual, unlike the Marcel incident. Plus part of the deal with the not-evil kind of hazing is that it's done between people who like each other, which didn't seem to be the case here. Anyway.
I think that was very much the case. With Marcel, it seems like everyone who ever had to work with him on the show got sick of him at some point. When I had my head shaved on a team it was as you described: largely consensual, and just another act of team building that involved a lot of alcohol.
Everyone else shaving their head after the Marcel incident was just extremely disingenuous.
Thank you and I had a very similar to experience playing football.
Jeez. These over the top hazing rituals you guys had... We just made all the rookies chug an old cleat full of everyone's mixed up drinks while they were crammed into a shower stall watching porn before we put them in dresses and made them run an obstacle course that ended with a KY slip and slide...
We did one called "tank" where rookies would be on their hands and knees and girls would ride around on their backs directing them which way to go. They were supposed to have mouths full of flour that they'd spit at each other when the girls said "fire!"
Knew I should have played lacrosse.
You're not gay enough... Or maybe too gay... Honestly, the line is a razer's edge.
A bit of a corollary is RuPaul's Drag Race. My wife has watched since season 1 and I have watched it since season 9 (when we started dating). We re-watched the first season during Covid and it was amazing how scruffy the show felt, and how lost some of the contestants were. No one knew what this thing was and it felt like the producers were making a lot of it up as they went along.
Now that it's an institution it has become a bit predictable. Every season you know basically ahead of time what the challenges will be (musical, improv, design, comedy, acting) and the contestants show up prepared (usually, so many of them show up not knowing how to use a sewing machine it drives me crazy).
The contestants themselves are also much more established and brand conscious. They are still catty in the ways that drag queens are, but the 'dramatic' interactions feel a bit more like pantomime compared to the earlier seasons when the queens would read the SHIT out of one another and blow-ups were much more common.
We still watch and enjoy the show, but in the past few years the sameness/predictability has made the seasons and contestants start to blend together. I'm hoping the show gets a major reset in the next few years (updated format or maybe even new host) to shake things up.
One of the reasons I found my way to Vince's recaps is because my husband & I started watching "Top Chef" during the pandemic—well, I had been watching it for a few years, but he got hooked on it and we went back and watched the earlier seasons. He refused to watch the first three seasons because they were filmed in standard definition, LOL, so I've still never seen s1.
We also got hooked on "Drag Race" in the same time period. I feel like the current season is the most chaotic in a while, but my biggest problem is always too many TikTok/Instagram "baby queens." If you watch the most recent UK season with La Voix, the difference in having a REAL seasoned queen in the cast (and I'm not talking about the oh-so-"ancient" Lexi Love) is obvious. I suspect, however, that if a "veteran" drag queen hasn't appeared on RPDR by now, it's because she doesn't want to do it... but there's an endless supply of 21-year-old fashionistas applying. The difference between Jorgeous in her original season and her all-stars season proves to me that a few extra years of experience can make a queen so much more likable and interesting.
Sasha Colby was so far and away the most talented queen in her season it was comical. Basically the entire season was a victory lap for her. She was the 96' Bulls of drag queens.
That was my problem with being a contestant, I aged out of it.
Nice summery there was also a wonderful first time ever restaurant wars . Tiffani talking about herself in the first person. She lost that final because of the way the judges cross examined Dave and Stephan and found out she was less than truthful about origin of the desert .